The Office "Gay Witch Hunt" (2006)

I'm going to try and be more thoughtful and less summarizing this time. I'd have to say I'm most impressed with The Office in that while being a comedy it also does not skim on the drama. Michael's outing of an employee could easily have gone the way of the ridiculous (we get a little of that with Dwight's mission to find the other gays) but there's no held punches in the anguish, frustration and discrimination Oscar feels once he is outed. The Office tends to stick to true to life reactions (most of the time) and the fact that Oscar is ready to walk out the door because of Michael's foolishness is in no way funny. When he yells at Michael stating he didn't want to be touched because he was ignorant, insulting and small I shivered wondering what it would be like to be in that conference room seeing it all play out right in front of me. Michael's reaction of crying and begging for forgiveness is also very realistic in that it does not appear to be an act and he is really hurt that Oscar feels that way about him.

Onto the Stamford branch we are introduced to 2 new main characters: Andy and Karen. The fact that Jim's opening prank results in such a violent response from Andy sets the stage well both in that 1) Jim appears to be trying to replicate the feeling from the Scranton office which he left because he "had no future" there and 2) that a different set of people results in very different results in terms of replicating performances.

Favorite moment: Karen's talking head in which she complains about Jim's mugging to the camera. Honestly I laughed louder at her imitation of his face than I did with the Oscar/Michael kiss.